Funny / Interesting Times

• While any dialogue concerning the Unseen U's senior faculty can be considered, this one stands out. It starts out with the Dean saying the Librarian isn't a proper orangutan, not having the huge cheek pads a dominant male should. Later on, it is pointed out that while the Librarian is the only orangutan at UU, he's only the librarian, and doesn't dominate the University.
  One by one, as the thought sank in, they [the faculty] grinned at the Archchancellor.
  Ridcully: Don't look at my cheeks like that! I don't dominate anybody!
  • Ponder explaining to Rincewind that "We're wizards, you know. We could give you your own bag of wind."
  Ridcully: Ah. Forward the Dean.
  The Dean: I heard that!
  • Ridcully's attempt to send The Dean to the Counterweight Continent:
  The Dean: But I hate foreigners!
  Ridcully: So do they. You'll get along famously.
  • Every staff member claiming to have visited their aunts in distant towns during the events of Sourcery... except Ridcully, who really had been in a distant area at the time.
  • Then there's the faculty's reaction to The Luggage. Of note, the Dean somehow got into the chandelier, much to the Librarian's annoyance.
  • Ridcully's reason for wanting to send the Dean; "They asked for the Great Wizard, Dean, and I thought of you." ...because he's the only man who can sit in two chairs at the same time.
  • When Vetinari suggests that by "Great Wizard", the context should mean someone who is superior, Ridcully notes "Not the Dean, then."
  • When Stibbons is explaining how the spell to bring Rincewind back to UU failed he goes though a long explanation full of scientific jargon that no one else can understand; everyone except the Bursar (who is well known to be insane, even with the frog pills) of all people.
  The Bursar: Oh, it's perfectly simple. We sent the ... dog thing to Hunghung. Rincewind was sent to some other place. And this creature was sent here. Just like Pass the Parcel.
  Ridcully: You see? You're using language the Bursar can understand.
  • Vetinari evokes Suspiciously Specific Denial to Ridcully about how a message did not arrive from the Counterweight Continent which certainly did not request a great wizzard, while he had just seen the message in question. Why Vetinari words himself like this goes completely past Ridcully, but he decides to play along. Later he relates all of this to the Unseen University faculty, with the denials included, who do not understand it either.
  Ridcully: Follow me so far?
  The Dean: I think we may be a shade unclear on the detail.
  Ridcully: I was using diplomatic language.
  The Dean: Could you, perhaps, try to be a little more indiscreet?
• A fact illustrating the unreliability of magic armour: the last words of many of the Disc's ancient lords were "You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh."
• Rincewind getting comfortable with the Red Army controls.
  He touched his nose. They touched their noses. He made, with terrible glee, the traditional gesture for the dismissal of demons. Seven thousand terracotta middle fingers stabbed toward the ceiling.
• "There are not 2,300,009 invisible bloodsucking vampire ghosts."
• The wizards kill Hong by teleporting a lit cannon right next to him. Accidentally.
  • And thinking they were doing the Agateans a favor by lighting it first, mistaking it for a harmless firework. Well, they were doing them a favor, just not the one they thought...
• The scene where Lord Hong admires himself, dressed up in Ankh-Morpork nobleman's fashion and envisions himself receiving the admiration of the Morporkians. The actual reaction of them, the text notes, would be more like "'Ere wot a toff! 'Eave arf a brick at 'im!"
• The entire footnote involving how to properly scream for mercy in other languages (screaming "aaaaargh" doesn't mean what it should be in some places), and the ensuing running gag throughout the rest of the book.
• The Samurai warriors perform the old trick of slicing silk kerchiefs as they fall. Cohen tosses his own, admittedly more used, hanky in the air. While the Samurai are watching the hanky keenly, Cohen takes the opportunity to decapitate them. Age and treachery scores yet another triumph over youth and skill.
• Any time Rincewind, Teach, Cohen, or anyone else mixes up the emphasis on the phrase, causing the resulting sentence to come out a little differently than intended.
• Mr. Saveloy's attempts to teach seven life-long barbarian heroes the fine art of exchanging money for goods and services, rather than looting the place and setting it on fire.
  Truckle the Uncivil: Give me all your... one apple!... and I will... give you?... this money!
  • Better yet, the basic fiscal principle he finds it necessary to explain to them, which they already have great difficulty with:
  "It is possible for money to legitimately belong to other people."
• Cohen dismissing the court... by telling them to bugger off. It gets translated as [complicated pictogram] , to which the response is:
  "What? Here?"
• Rincewind, clinging from a ledge, uses charades to express his dilemma with one of the Red Army. When Twoflower and company retrieve him, Twoflower explains that while they didn't get most of the gestures, "OhshitohshitohshitI'mgonnadie" came across perfectly.
• While fleeing guards in the Emperor's Palace, Rincewind comes across a room full of sleeping sumo wrestlers. Well, we know they're sumo wrestlers; but from Rincewind's perspective, it looks like someone decided to breed a sub-race of absurdly fat humans and put them in diapers. He quickly wakes them up, and declares that his pursuers have sandwiches, and only has to stand back and watch as a very blubbery stampede ensues.
  • This being the Discworld, they're naturally dialed up to eleven - a confused sumo is described as eating a roof, and One Big River is mentioned to have failed the entry test to become a sumo by not eating the table.
• Rincewind, in a rare moment of quiet, actually manages to begin flipping through What I Did on My Holidays, mocking everything in the book... until he realizes who the author is and what it's describing.
• The astounded descriptions of life in Ankh-Morpork in from the book, such as:
  'I saw a man tread upon the toes of a City Guard who said to him "Your wife is a big hippo!" to which the man responded "Place it where the sun does not shed daylight, enormous person", upon which the Guard [this bit was in red ink and the handwriting was shaky, as if the writer was quite excited] did not remove the man's head according to ancient custom.' The statement was followed by a pictogram of a dog passing water, which was for some obscure reason the Agatean equivalent of an exclamation mark. There were five of these.
• Rincewind imitating a servant in order to get through the palace to Cohen, just as Hong's poisoning his food. Rincewind mucks up his Agatean, and Hong almost suspects him.
  Hong: ... where are you from?
  Rincewind: Bes Pelagic.
  Hong: Ah.
  • And, once he gets there as one of the servants delivering breakfast, his deadpan warning.
    Rincewind: [lifts a dish cover] But take my tip and don't go for this pork. It's been poisoned.
• Death and War discussing "bacon surprise".
  Death: What's so surprising about it?
  War: I imagine it comes as something of a shock to the pig.

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